2018 Summer Roadtrip to California has Begun!

Hi everyone, welcome to 2018 The-Pittstop blog.  At the end of our trip last year, we had Li'l Guy painted and boy, is he looking good!

Before

After

Our 2018 original vague plans were to see Death Valley and try to catch the early spring flowers
Those plans were put on hold because Jack had to have hernia surgery in April and it had a 6-week recuperation.  We couldn't do major planing until we were confident that he would not have any complications.  So, how would we change our plans to accommodate leaving 3 months later?  After lots of waffling, we did not change them at all.....Death Valley in the middle of summer.  However, we won't be seeing any flowers and probably will not be staying long..hottest place in the USA.

Once Jack's doctor gave him the okay, we packed the RV up and had some maintenance done over a few days, but delayed our departure because of the Alberto storm hitting the Gulf Coast.  We finally got on the road Tuesday around noon, heading south travelling through two massive rainstorms with blinding downpours and lots of lightening.  We stayed in a nice campground in southeast Georgia but it spritzed on and off, keeping us indoors. 

We woke on Wednesday to a warm, humid sunny morning.  We took a short walk to a small pond and then drove west across southern Georgia.

 

This is berry (blueberries?) country with fields of berry bushes and a number of berry processing plants.  Then we moved on to pecan territory seeing vast groves of pecan trees and pecan processing plants.  We stopped for the night at Falling Waters State Park in the northern part of the Florida panhandle.  Nice campground with the highest waterfall in Florida.  Okay, so it isn't really very high considering pretty much the highest points in Florida are the overpasses.

Thursday dawned warm, humid and sunny, again.  We needed the AC on all night.  After breakfast we walked to a waterfall viewpoint.  The water cascades over a ledge down into a deep sinkhole and they have no idea where the water goes! 

Top of Waterfall

Falling into the Sinkhole

We got on the road heading south to the Gulf Coast and drove through numerous beach towns and got a nice campsite at Henderson Beach State Park - halfway between Destin and Fort Walton.  Pure white, fine sand beach and pale green water.  We enjoyed our beachtime, but no swimming was allowed because of rip currents.